John Amaechi Comes Out of the Closet

[nbrans]

Amaechi becomes first NBA player to come out

John Amaechi, who played at Penn State and for five seasons in the NBA, will announce he is gay in an upcoming book.


The book, published by ESPN Books (owned by the Walt Disney Company, parent company of ESPN), is entitled "Man in the Middle." It is due to be released later this month.

Amaechi, born in Massachusetts but raised in England, would be the first NBA player to come out publicly. Few other men's professional major sport athletes have announced they are gay. Among them are football player Esera Tuaolo, baseball player Billy Bean and baseball umpire Dave Pallone.

Amaechi, a 6-10 center, played for Cleveland, Orlando and Utah during five NBA seasons. He averaged 6.2 points and 2.6 rebounds before retiring from the league in 2003.

He is currently known in Britain as a television personality and for helping fund the Amaechi Basketball Center in Manchester.
He played collegiately at Penn State after transferring from Vanderbilt.

Amaechi will also be the subject of ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on Sunday (9:30 a.m. ET). The book will also be excerpted next week on ESPN.com and in the next issue of ESPN The Magazine.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2757105

 

[nbrans]

I'm not sure if "congratulations" are in order to John since it shouldn't be this big of a deal to begin with, but hopefully this will be a step toward making the NBA (and hopefully the world) a little less intolerant.

 

[piksi]

I am very shocked that NBA players can actually write

 

[jon e]

he came out of the closet to come out of the closet. no one cared about him when he played and no one cares about him now gay or not gay.

 

[Gargamel]

he came out of the closet to come out of the closet. no one cared about him when he played and no one cares about him now gay or not gay.

Karl Malone would've loved to have known that Amaechi was gay when they were teammates.

 

[Bricklayer]

I think the NBA was much more intolerant of John's sucktitude than they were of his sexual orientation.